Thousands Join DA March for Jobs in Joburg, as Maimane Blames Zuma

JOHANNESBURG – Thousands of people joined the Democratic Alliance in the March for Jobs in Johannesburg on Wednesday, a horde of blue T-shirts crowding the streets into the city to bring attention to the estimated 8.4 million unemployed in the country.

Addressing the crowd, DA leader Mmusi Maimane said the party wanted to make job creation a national cause, and he lashed out at President Jacob Zuma for having taken the country down this road.

It was Zuma, he said, who had protected “his friends, the Guptas, but not ordinary South Africans”, protected “the SADTU bosses at the expense of millions of school learners’, protected “the working, but not the unemployed”.

“We see those with connections to ANC councillors getting jobs and tenders while the rest of you get nothing. We see government’s version of BEE re-empowering the same connected individuals over and over again, while ordinary South Africans remain left out in the cold,” Maimane said.

“Everywhere I go in South Africa, people tell me that they can only get an EPWP job if they know the right people, or if the local ANC councillor is their friend. This is corruption, and it is destroying job opportunities.”

It was for this reason, Maimane said, that the DA had started putting up the stories of the unemployed in South Africa on their Facebook page, to let people know that every one of them was a person with a story.

“We are here today because we believe that the hope for our nation, that the only way out of poverty, is always through a job,” Maimane said. “We cannot build a prosperous future for South Africa when 8.4 million South Africans are excluded and have no hope, no sense of belonging.”

Large groups of people gathered at Westgate from early this morning to take part in the march.

“Thousands of us have come here today to march for something. For jobs. For change,” Maimane said.

Maimane said 1.84 million people had become jobless since Jacob Zuma became president, a figure that had been made prominent by a large billboard put up in Johannesburg earlier this month. Since then 770 people a day joined the ranks of the unemployed, he added.

But that billboard was torn down this week, an act of destruction Maimane referred to.

“They got angry at our billboard. They called it racist, and they vandalised it. You see, the ANC has forgotten the real-life struggles of South Africans who have no work.”

Maimane continued, “Everyone is paying more for food, everyone is paying more for transport. Throughout the country, people have been telling me that it is getting more difficult to find work, even piece work. Even those with jobs feel unsure about their future, and they worry for their families.

“South Africa can do better than this. We are angry that so many of our people are unemployed, when we know they don’t have to be.”